Chinese animation industry has maintained the momentum of robust growth from 2014 on, thanks to the government's supportive policies on animation industry and booming Internet-based new media distribution channels. In 2014, the total output value of China’s animation industry exceeded RMB100 billion, up 14.84% from a year earlier.

The animation industry of China characterizes the following during 2014-2015:

The production of animation declined, but box-office earnings of animated movies kept going up. In 2014, China produced 138,579 minutes of domestic TV cartoons, down 32.31% year on year, the lowest level since 2009 and only half of the peak in 2011. There are two main reasons: 1) Fierce market competition resulted in slim profits for some animation firms to stay afloat. 2) Proposal for animation production transiting from quantity to quality put forward in the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015) promoted local authorities to optimize their support schemes.

In 2014, a total of 45 animated movies were released in Chinese mainland theatres, generating total box office of nearly RMB3 billion, including about RMB1.9 billion contributed by 17 imported animated movies and RMB1.06 billion by 28 domestic ones.

The rise and prosperity of new media channels represented by mobile Internet and smart TV fueled the development of animation industry. The influence of Internet on the animation industry is reflected in the following three aspects: 1) New media channels are more demanding on the segmentation of animation content. Video websites have special column for animations. 2) Animation is endowed with the property of being social to meet people’s social needs, such as “barrage”, animation fairs, and animation communities. 3) New media provides demand for animation derivatives like games on desktop and mobile devices.

Take U17.com (a premier platform for original comics and animations) for example, its animated short “One Hundred Thousand Bad Jokes” was broadcast for hundreds of millions of times, and the movie of the same name released in early 2015 recorded a box office of RMB118 million.

Derivatives market size continued to expand. In 2014, the Chinese animation derivatives market scale grew by 19.7% year on year to RMB31.6 billion, or 31.6% of the entire animation industry (with a growth rate of 14.8%). Animation toys hold the highest proportion, more than half of the whole Chinese animation derivatives market size, followed by animation apparel and animation publishing with a share of 16% and 4%, respectively.

Major listed animation companies continuously extended industry chain with the aim of making a business presence throughout the whole industry via M&As.